First came Luhrmann's comments to MTV on Wednesday night:
"One is a musical and one is a period work, both based in New York City, and I'm about to make that decision. I've got the script for both of them and I'm making that decision in four to six weeks, no longer than six weeks," he teased, adding that Gatsby had no plans to add some singing. "Singing Gatsby? No! Gatsby, it is the Fitzgerald book and I've been working on that quite a lot. The other one is also New York based and music-driven and it's just a question of ... what is the next right step for me." [...]
[H]e also wouldn't weigh in on those Leo/Gatsby rumors. "You know I think of casting all the time, but I put that to the side and I complete the text," he said. "Obviously there are natural choices and there is a natural top of the list, but I really refuse to say anything until we have text right."
Cue Production Weekly's Twitter blabbermouths, who fired back a few hours later with the tweet, "Rumored casting for The Great Gatsby, Leonardo DiCaprio for Jay Gatsby, Tobey Maguire for Nick Carraway & Amanda Seyfried for Daisy Buchanan." Makes sense! DiCaprio and Maguire are old, awards-campaign scandal-dodging pals, as you know, and Amanda Seyfried would make as ideal a Daisy as anyone this side of... I don't know. I like her. I say go for it.
But enough with all that glam and hype, seriously. Not even Fitzgerald's masterpiece can wrest independence today from The Social Network, which no fewer than three critics have cited as a modern-day extrapolation of the Gatsby myth by way of Harvard hacker wonkery:
· [T]his movie is more like a pessimistic, modern-dress reworking of The Great Gatsby, featuring [Andrew] Garfield's [Eduardo] Saverin in the Nick Carraway observer role and transforming the enigmatic, self-constructed dude at the center of the story from a suave ladies' man and party host to a tic-laden, hoodie-wearing introvert who can barely hold a conversation. Like Gatsby, the [Mark] Zuckerberg of The Social Network is almost pathetically consumed by the Girl Who Got Away, who drove him not just to play a vicious prank on Harvard's female population but also to become the youngest billionaire in history. -- Andrew O'Hehir, Salon
· The Social Network has understandably been compared to Citizen Kane in its depiction of a man who changes society through bending an emergent technology to his will. But with its leitmotif of striving, resentment and cherchez la femme, the story also evokes Fitzgerald at his most longing and elegiac. A modern-day Jay Gatsby, the "refresh" button on his keyboard standing in for Daisy Buchanan's flashing green dock light, Zuckerberg -- or at least Sorkin's version of him -- embodies all those timeless contradictions and of-the-moment tics (the hoodie, those flip-flops) that make for a classic literary anti-hero. -- Ann Hornaday, Washington Post
· Sorkin's Zuckerberg sets down the path that will eventually lead him to billions while soaking in a beer-fueled snit fit at a girl (Rooney Mara) who won't have him. In a sense, all that follows -- the programming marathons, the less-than-above-board business dealings, the efforts to position the web site and turn it into a phenomenon -- is spurred by Zuckerberg's yearning for this dream girl. She is Daisy Buchanan to his Jay Gatsby, and the green light on a distant dock has morphed into the refresh button on a Facebook page. -- Shawn Levy, The Oregonian
And there you have it. Armond White no doubt hates Luhrmann's adaptation already.
· Baz Luhrmann Deciding Between Doing Great Gatsby Or Mysterious Musical Project [MTV via /film]
· Hornaday and Levy reviews via Hollywood Elsewhere